


Second Home by the Sea

by Lady_Spindle



Category: 91 Days (Anime)
Genre: Domestic Bliss, Domestic Disputes, Domestic Fluff, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, First Kiss, Fishing, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Post Series, dubious fruit aquisition, life in florida, post episode 12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 04:05:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17073140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Spindle/pseuds/Lady_Spindle
Summary: Reasonably, he should be able to leave this place, this thatched-roof-hut in a sphere where time has no meaning beyond the cyclical rise and fall of the sun, punctuated by the rise and fall of steady beating waves.  He’s begun to realize that, for better or worse, he can’t live with or without Angelo.





	Second Home by the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Sappy, self indulgent domestic fluff with a dash of angst

The Florida that Angelo longed for was a quiet one.

Day in and day out spent in their seaside shack, the air thick during the oppressive, blazing days and humid, uncomfortable nights.  They have very little, a camping stove, an improvised oven, a repurposed table with mismatched stools, both rickety and uneven. The singular bedroom in the shack is sectioned off with actual walls and the bathroom, a free standing tub and a chamberpot, are divided by a set of folding wooden screens, once beautiful, now with few chips of paint clinging to splintering carved details.

Time has no meaning here.  If Nero were to sit still, as he often does on the front porch when the inside of the shack becomes too stifling, he might blink slowly, and wake up to find that weeks or months had passed. The cyclical tides would not have changed, nor would the rising and setting sun, and the craggy bluffs to the north would not bear any marks from the eroding sand.  Perhaps the ever-shifting dunes would have to be a reminder that the great wheel of time did roll forward, with himself and Angelo as the tiny, insignificant grains tossed around in its wake.

It’s been a month and they barely speak.

A month since they stood on a different beach when Nero pulled the trigger and decided not to kill Angelo.

Rather, pulled the trigger and let fate take its toll.  Fate was not his ally; he missed, not even a graze.

He could have shot again, but for the moment it seemed providence deigned that he would not be killing his family’s murderer, past or present.

Wordlessly, he’d hustled Angelo into the backseat of the car and told him to lay low.  The Galassias still trailed them, and it took another week and a series of car thefts to finally shake them off.

Then they had stumbled into an abandoned fishing shack, far from society, and it almost seemed too easy to settle there and be complicit.

Without the Galassias there is only the sky and the sea, the beach and the bluffs, Angelo and Nero, in their tiny run-down shack with mountains of history between them, and silence.

Nero places his revolver on the table each morning, and Angelo barely reacts. It crosses his mind often that Angelo, in this vulnerable, withdrawn state, would be terribly easy to kill.  He might not even struggle.

Somewhere in his mind Nero sees himself pick up the gun, almost leisurely, and press the barrel to Angelo’s forehead.  His dull gold eyes don’t even waver in Nero’s imagination.

Nero wouldn’t shoot Angelo here, he’d at least have the decency to escort him out back.  The thought of scrubbing blood from the porous bleached driftwood floor is entirely unappealing.

Day after day, he doesn’t shoot.  Angelo doesn’t speak.  Sometimes he doesn’t move from his palette in the corner.  Nero is often grateful to not have to look directly at him; Angelo’s face is a cruel reminder of all his loss.  Reasonably, he should be able to leave this place, this thatched-roof-hut in a sphere where time has no meaning beyond the cyclical rise and fall of the sun, punctuated by the rise and fall of steady beating waves.  He’s begun to realize that, for better or worse, he can’t live with or without Angelo.

If he can even live at all.

So one day after he’s placed the revolver on the table he lifts it, with a certain degree of drama, and empties the bullet cartridges.  He pockets the bullets and places the empty gun beside his bed. 

When he returns to the table, Angelo still has not moved. Nero pours himself a coffee.  He’s perhaps convinced that Angelo is indeed made of stone.  A statue, choosing to stand still in this place where time has no meaning.  Nero drifts in and out of time, past, present, future, all mulled together in an indeterminate tangle.  Who is it that sits before him? A brother? An enemy? A ghost?

“There’s coffee,” he mentions, voice hoarse from disuse as he downs his own cup.

Angelo does not speak – never speaks.  But his eyes flick upward momentarily as though Nero’s voice had startled him, drawn him from somewhere deep and intangible, back to solid ground.

The rickety stool he sits on scrapes the floor with unexpected loudness as Angelo rises to his feet.  He returns with an empty tin can full of coffee and proceeds to pour far too much of their precious sugar supply into it.

Nero watches his stiff, inhuman movements with the same gross satisfaction of watching a marionette flit around.

A hint of something crosses Angelo’s face when he takes the first sip.  So perhaps…not made of stone.

* * *

 

Less than a week into their new life, Nero realizes he’ll need to find a way to provide.  Angelo barely eats, but Nero still does, and a handful of pilfered cans of beans won’t last forever.

A dozen or so miles down the road is a medium sized seaside town. Luckily, it’s large enough that drifters often pass by or settle, so his presence raises no suspicion.  He finds a job painting fishing boats.  It’s long hours of labor in the heat, but the pay is alright and no one asks questions.

The handful of fisherman he works alongside are gruff and rowdy, excellent company to break up the long heated hours of menial tasks.

“You have yourself a wife back home, Marte?” One asks, Harold is his name.

Briefly, an image of Angelo, sulking in the corner, glaring at Nero, crosses his mind and he nearly says “yes, she’s the grumpiest person you would ever meet.” He shouldn’t be thinking about Angelo being a housewife (but if he were, gender aside, he would be terrible at it), he shouldn’t be thinking about Angelo at all.

Instead he supplies a generic, “nope, no wife, just me for the time being.”

They accept his response without question.

* * *

 

His job sustains them, just enough.  Every day he portions out two equal sized meals and slides a tin plate to the opposite side of the table, sometimes Angelo is there, sometimes he lays for days in his corner of piled up rags and cushions that serve as a makeshift bed.

When he does eat, it’s very little, but Nero is more than willing to finish the leftovers.  Nothing is wasted.

It takes about a week of Angelo barely touching the food for Nero to notice he’d grown paler and thinner than usual, clothes hanging loose off a skeletal frame.  He’s wasting away.

Nero thinks to himself, if he’s going to starve himself out of existence he should just die so Nero doesn’t have to provide for two (not that it really feels like he is, with Angelo refusing to eat more than a few spoonfuls).  A nagging part of Nero’s mind asks him what he would do were he alone, without the added motivation of providing for someone else to get him through the days.  He might wither away too…

The next time Angelo takes a singular bite and slides the plate away, Nero shoves it back, holding it firm when Angelo tries to push it away again.

“Eat.” He orders, “You’re wasting away.”

Angelo’s head hangs, bangs obscuring his face, but through the curtain of dark locks Nero hears him utter, “no”.

His temper flares, after weeks of not speaking a single word the first thing out of his mouth is defiance!

“If you don’t eat it I’ll force it down your throat,” Nero threatens.

Angelo seems to physically recoil at the thought, but he stubbornly grips the table, head turned away from Nero.  From sunken sockets, his gold eyes still glare, hard and cold and unyielding.

“I’m tired of beans,” he says quietly, petulantly.  Like a child.

Nero slams a fist on the table, rattling the tin plates, “then why don’t you go out and find work?! Do you think it’s easy providing for two people? I work all day and you do nothing and you have the nerve to _complain_ about the food?!” He’s shaking as he leans closer to Angelo, still glaring defiantly.

They stay like this for tense moments, Nero ready to come through with his promise.  Angelo looks at him as though daring him to just put him out of his misery, smash his head onto the table, take him outside and strangle him, or maybe go through the effort of meticulously replacing a single bullet into his revolver…

Nero will let him have none of it. He reaches for the fork by Angelo’s hand but it’s snatched away before he can grasp it.  Without breaking eye contact Angelo stuffs a spoonful of beans into his mouth.  Then another, and another, until the plate is half empty.  He shoves it away.

Eyes narrowing, Nero returns to his seat at the table, still not breaking eye contact, and scrapes the rest of Angelo’s portion onto his tin plate.  Finally looking away, Angelo turns tail on the stool and flops down on his pile of cushions and blankets, curled up with his back to Nero.

The older man begins to eat the beans, now cold.  Angelo’s exposed back pulls him to the near past, in the forest, by the fire, where Angelo had slept the same way.  Minutes before that Nero had lashed out at him, much like now, and pinned him to a tree.  Angelo had shown, for the first time, real emotion, and Nero hadn’t known what to make of it. He wondered if that fire still lurked under the cold, lifeless visage of frail boy before him, or if that single outburst burnt him out, a charred, crumbling husk left behind.

* * *

 

He returns from work as the sun sets to find a bowl of fruit on the table.  Oranges, peaches, even a couple apples and a lemon.

Angelo lies listlessly in the corner, and Nero might even believe him to be asleep.

When he wakes up long enough to scrape through half of his plate of food, Nero doesn’t ask him about the fruit.  It strikes him that Angelo preferred he not bring light to his contribution.

The fruit becomes a constant in their little home, day in and day out a different variety.  Sometimes vegetables worked their way into the mix, cabbages, turnips, onions, all a bit on the small side.  Something that could have been scavenged from the edge of a field.

It must be a different kind of pick pocketing for Angelo, doubtless there weren’t any fences for him to shimmy under to steal fruits from in Chicago.

Nero is content to let his minor thievery slide into their daily routine, as though it had always been that way. 

Keeping the façade that somehow fruits and vegetables miraculously materialized in their house works seamlessly until a day when Nero must have come back early from work.

Angelo walks in with an armful of fruit, and, upon seeing Nero, drops it on the table.  He bolts for his bed, throwing a blanket over himself.

Nero watches the display with a strange feeling prickling in his chest.  He takes the largest orange from the table and cuts it in half, pulling off the peel.  Mindful of the dripping juice, he picks up the smaller stool and drags it over a few feet away from where Angelo lies.  The younger man looks over at Nero with an accusatory expression.  Wordlessly, Nero proffers half of the orange and takes a seat on the stool.  Eyes still narrowed, Angelo accepts the fruit.

They eat in silence, savoring the sweet, citrusy taste.  Nero counts down the wedges of his half until he finishes.  Without the pretense of food, Nero picks up the stool and awkwardly distances himself.

He repeats the ritual the next day, and the next, until it becomes a daily occurrence.  After returning from work, Nero would take the largest piece of fruit and split it in half for himself and Angelo. The younger man seems to anticipate the exchange, sitting up on his palette when Nero returns.

Nero pulls over a stool and hands Angelo half of a peach.  He takes a cautious bite, eyes falling closed.  It brings a small smile to Nero’s face, he did always have the biggest sweet tooth.

Angelo finishes quickly, licking his fingers and mumbling, “sweet”.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” Nero enthuses. 

The younger man seems to freeze upon hearing Nero’s bright reaction, retreating into himself. He nods in response, eyes trained on the floor.

Nero retreats, but he’s pleased with the exchange.  Angelo responded.

Each day, for a handful of precious moments, he feels content existing in the same sphere as Angelo, without resistance or anger.

It is unsustainable, but a part of Nero still wishes he could go back to the easy comradery of their past. 

Their forced domesticity, a byproduct of some ill-conceived codependency, cannot last. He wonders often which one of them will break first.

Later, he walks along the beach alone in the twilight, smoking a cigarette. 

When he returns to the fishing hut, feeling more relaxed, Angelo is rummaging around the kitchen area, unlit cigarette hanging from his lips.

“Here,” Nero pulls out his lighter and tosses it to Angelo who catches it easily.

Without skipping a beat, he flicks it open and cups the end of his cigarette.

“I’m going to be gone for a few days,” Nero announces finally.  He’d been avoiding it. He stares off in the direction of the wooden screen enclosing the bathroom area.

The sound of his lighter hitting the floor draws his attention back to Angelo.  The younger man scoops up the fallen item swiftly, placing it on the table.  Nero thinks he sees a flicker of…something…cross his face.

“The guys I work with…they’re going on a fishing trip and invited me along.  I figured…we could use the food,” Nero explains, distracted in trying to figure out Angelo’s curious expression.

He, predictably, gets no response.

“I bought you three cans of pineapple,” he cringes, remembering how the slight luxury had eaten up his paycheck.  “You need to eat something while I’m gone.”

Still, nothing.

Nero scoffs, irritated.  He had thought that pineapples would be enough to convince Angelo to eat.

He brushes by the younger man, unkindly, and draws back the curtain over the door to his room.  Pausing in the doorframe, Nero clenches his fist around the fabric.

“Or starve, if you want to.  Doesn’t matter to me.”

It’s nothing he hasn’t thought before, but saying it out loud leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

Before the sun rises the next day, Nero packs up the car and drives to the docks where his coworkers await.

* * *

 

Fishing is nice.  The group is predictably crass and entertaining in equal parts.  They remind Nero a bit of the mafia, though the mere suggestion of those long past weighs heavy on Nero.  Fishing brings back memories of himself and Vanno, tying makeshift lures and testing their skills in the local pond.  Vanno always tried to catch the biggest fish, wanting to impress Fio who, in hindsight, was probably disgusted at the offer of mostly dead fish. Even if he didn’t catch the biggest one, Nero always let him swap.  He and Vanno were best friends, he would have loved for him to be married into his family.

The memories are so hazy now, from a warm, bright time when the future felt as though it would bring nothing but greater happiness.

Nero forces himself to focus on fishing, to try to enjoy the break from work and his stifling existence in the fishing shack. It’s lonelier somehow, with the other men, they think of Nero as just a simple wanderer, a vagabond who might have found a place to settle. He has no abiding need to be looked up to or in a place of command as he had in the mafia, but none of the people here can understand him, not really, not the numbing depth of his loss and the Herculean effort it has taken every single day to drag himself out of it, or at least stave off the crushing weight of the past.

They might suspect but they don’t fully know him not like…

…Angelo does.

He reels in a catch slowly, wondering continually if he will be returning home to a corpse.

No matter how far away he goes, or how he tries to distance himself, Angelo always finds his way back into his thoughts.  His friend turned enemy, petulant but listless, who stole fruits and vegetables each day because he, in some capacity, must still care. This tangled mess of a person…Nero wishes he could reach in and tease out the parts of Angelo he knew and cared for, try to help him make sense of himself before he faded away. Even though, to Angelo, Nero is likely his last choice as a source of compassion.

Nero just wants to see a glimmer of the person he’d once laughed and fought beside again.

* * *

 

It is dusk when he returns Saturday night. He kills the car engine and walks slowly to the hut, both arms laden with ice boxes of fresh fish.  The other men showed him how to dry them properly, but that is a project for tomorrow.

Still feeling apprehensive, he opens the door to the hut, calling out, “Angelo?”

Two empty pineapple cans sit on the table so at least…he ate something.

“Angelo?” He calls again before being startled by the pale silhouette of the man in question sitting up in his makeshift bed.

“You’re back,” is all he says, emotion absent.

“Yeah,” Nero pauses, not really knowing what else to say.  He settles on nothing, and places the containers of fish on the table. For the moment he needs to decompress on the front porch with a cigarette.

He lights up a cigarette and watches the waves roll in.  Not that he hasn’t seen enough water in the previous days. It’s enough to distract him. An unrealistic corner of his mind must have thought he would come home to Angelo, doting and pleased to see him.  That might explain why he subconsciously feels disappointed.  Nothing has changed,  nor should it have.

To his surprise, Angelo joins him on the porch a few minutes later.  Nero offers his lighter and Angelo begins taking long drags off of his own cigarette.

The silence grows uncomfortable, prompting Nero to attempt a conversation.

“Did you miss me while I was gone?” he asks, teasing, a tiny part of him still holding out hope.

Angelo shoots him a brief, strange look before muttering, “no.”

It’s not that Nero expected Angelo to gush about how much he missed him, but the response is deflating nonetheless.

He works his way through his cigarette, stubbing it out when it had burned low. 

“I’m going for a walk,” he announces, part to break the silence, part challenge.  To see if Angelo might follow.

He does.

Nero leads them up a shrubby path to the rocky bluffs north of their hut.  The winds whip the sand around, gritty and abrasive.

“In a couple weeks they’re going on another trip, I should go, it’ll be nice to have fresh meat around more often. The guys also showed me how to catch crabs and mussels with a net, I can show you,” Nero pauses, turning slightly to make sure Angelo still trails behind him.  The younger man pauses, looking at Nero with a tortured expression. He wishes Angelo would just _say something_ instead of all these cryptic expressions.  Nero had a hard time reading him sometimes when he still thought they were friends but now…he rarely has any idea what might be going through Angelo’s mind.

Unsure what to make of him, Nero lies down on the ground, arms behind his head, “they also pointed out some of the constellations. In a month or so we should be able to see the Perseid meteor shower…”

Angelo lies down beside him, looking more at Nero than the stars.  His level, murky gaze is unnerving.

“Anyways, we should be able to look just over there and see-” he trails off when Angelo reaches a hand forward, caressing his cheek, the pad of his thumb brushing over the contours of his lower lip.

Nero’s breath hitches and he lies very still.  His first instinct should be to push him away.  They aren’t friends, barely less than enemies, and Angelo had not given any indication that he felt anything for Nero let alone this…

Angelo leans in and presses a light kiss to Nero’s forehead, then his cheeks, then nose, and by then Nero lets himself relax, eyes fluttering shut. He’s curious, and maybe blinded by just how much _he_ wants this.  If he moves, he might break the spell.

Angelo’s curious ministrations grow more hesitant: a tentative kiss to the corner of his mouth then he can feel his warm, stuttering breath over his lips before they connect for an instant.

Immediately, Angelo springs away from Nero.  The wind feels substantially cooler without his closeness. Nero slowly sits up, feeling sand fall from his hair and clothes. He crawls over to where Angelo sits, knees pulled to his chest.

“Don’t,” Angelo snaps, he sounds mortified, “don’t look at me. I’m not…”

Nero is interested in none of this and pulls Angelo around, pressing a full kiss to his lips.  The younger man freezes and Nero wonders for a horrible few seconds if he misinterpreted.  But moments later Angelo is kissing Nero back with feverish abandon, licking and biting his mouth.  Nero cards one hand through his hair, the other firmly taking hold of his chin, matching his fervor.

It takes him a moment to notice that the cold, damp feeling against his cheeks were tears.  Angelo breaks away from him long enough to draw in a shuddering breath, whole body trembling.

“I did miss you,” he sobs.

“What?” Nero uses both hands to cradle Angelo’s head.

“Please don’t leave me again,” his face crumples like it had the night in the forest, when Nero still had half a mind to kill him.

This feeling no longer exists, replaced by an overwhelming urge to comfort him.

Nero draws Angelo to his chest, feeling a wave of unshed tears prickle the corners of his eyes.

“I won’t, I won’t leave, not forever,” a couple droplets make their way down his cheeks.

It’s a truth that needs to be acknowledged.  Nero used to hate that he felt he couldn’t leave Angelo, but now it’s clearer to him, he can’t abandon Angelo, and Angelo needs him just as much.  

The younger man wraps his arms tighter around Nero, face pressed into his shoulder until his sobs subside. His expression is exhausted beyond words, all his energy poured out at once.  Curiously, he cups Nero’s jaw, thumbs gently wiping away the tears that had run down his cheeks.

Eyes searching for permission, Angelo tilts his head and leans forward, seeking Nero’s lips again. They kiss slow and tentative, cold from their tears. 

The wind picks up around them, sand razing over their forms, stripping away the people they once were, birthing them anew.

Much later, Nero takes Angelo’s hand and slowly draws them both to their feet. He feels strangely calm after the whirlwind from before.  He tries to catalogue each little gesture, every expression Angelo had shown in the past months, and their culmination up to this moment begins to make sense. Maybe all he had needed was a push.  Maybe Nero too. They can’t go back to the way their lives used to be, but that in itself is an enormous relief.

Back inside the hut, Nero begins pulling Angelo towards his bedroom.  The bed is big enough for two, and Nero is desperate to keep a semblance of the intimacy they shared on the bluffs. Angelo yanks his hand free at the suggestion, and Nero fears that he might have broken their tentative peace.

He rubs his hands together uncomfortably before mumbling, “Goodnight Nero.”

“Goodnight,” Nero echoes, watching Angelo return to his make-shift bed.  He retires to his own shortly thereafter. It’s a bit disheartening, but Nero supposes he could think of many reasons why Angelo wouldn’t want to share a sleeping space with him. Not right away, at least.  

Sometime in the middle of the night however, he is fairly certain he feels an extra weight curled against him atop his covers, but in the morning he awakes alone.

Mid-morning sunlight streams through the windows. From outside the swaying curtain that stands in as his door, he can hear Angelo shuffling around the kitchen, the sounds of fruit being chopped. He wanders out, watching Angelo work with a sort of mesmerized enchantment. He wants to creep up behind him and wrap his arms around his waist, press his face into the crook of his neck and breathe in the heady scent of his pale skin, press a kiss to the sensitive area behind his ear.  In a perfect world, Angelo would lean back into his touch, an appreciative shiver running through his frame. He’d kiss Nero good morning and his lips would taste like the fruits he cut up.

But Nero knows better than to push his luck. They are at a fragile state, perhaps more so than before, and the last thing he wants to do is to ruin the progress they’ve made.

So he takes a seat at the table, the sound of the stool scraping the wooden floor is enough to make Angelo jump. He whips around, eyes wide.

“Morning,” Nero offers him a small smile.

“There’s coffee,” Angelo mumbles, motioning to the kettle on the counter.

“Thank you,” he meanders over to pour himself a cup.  Angelo says nothing in reply, but his cheeks are dusted pink.

He slides a platter loaded with fruit onto the table minutes later, taking a seat across from Nero.

They eat in silence, and a part of Nero is frightened that whatever glorious uproar of understanding they had felt the night before had vanished. That somehow they were back to square one.

But a few minutes into the meal, Angelo slides a hand across the table and laces his fingers with Nero’s.  His heart does a little somersault and he slides his hand forward to better slot their fingers together.  In contrast, Angelo looks off to the side, bored even, but Nero has grown accustomed to deciphering his subtle expressions and mannerisms, and soon he’ll grow to understand Angelo’s displays of affection.

“Do you want to go to the beach today?” Nero asks, downing the rest of his coffee.

“We live on the beach,” Angelo deadpans.

“Do you want to swim in the ocean and play on the beach,” he clarifies.

Angelo finishes chewing and swallowing a slice of peach before standing up, relinquishing his hold on Nero’s hand.  Nero startles when he notices Angelo reaching for the fly on his pants, undoing the button and letting them drop unceremoniously in a heap at his feet.

“Um…Angelo…” Nero stutters.

He stuffs another piece of fruit in his mouth, unconcerned, “If we’re going swimming we should go now before it gets too warm.”

While Nero internally reels, Angelo walks out the front door.  His brain finally catches up with his motor skills, and Nero strips down to his boxers, following Angelo to the shoreline.

The sand is already hot under his bare feet as he sprints to where Angelo is already splashing along the shore.

“Aren’t you going to leave your shirt in the hut?” Nero asks, noting that Angelo has left it on unbuttoned.

“I’ll get sunburned,” he replies, glancing warily at the sky where the blazing sun continues to climb. For someone who longed for Florida as Angelo had, he certainly did not possess the complexion for it.

Nero catches Angelo staring at him, brazen and unabashed.

“It’s not fair you…” he mutters, “You tan.”

Nero does.  Working on boats all day has baked him to a glowing bronze.  Angelo stares a moment longer before averting his gaze, but Nero doesn’t miss the flash of hunger in his eyes. 

He reaches down, scooping up a handful of water, and flings it at Angelo.  The younger man kicks the next wave-full of water in Nero’s direction before breaking into a run down the beach.  Nero chases him, face cracking into a smile.  He soon catches Angelo in his arms and drags him into the ocean up to his waist.  Waves rise and swell around them, breaking at the level of Nero’s shoulders.  Slightly panicked, Angelo snakes his arms and legs around Nero, ankles locking around his hips.

“I can’t swim,” he blurts, breathless.

“Yet you love the ocean,” Nero teases.  He can’t actually complain, not with Angelo pressed tight against him.

Angelo’s retaliation to Nero’s jest turns out to be kissing him, full on the lips.  He shifts his arms around Angelo to better support his weight.  His lips taste salty, from the ocean spray this time and not his tears.  The waves ebb and flow around them in an easy rhythm.

They pull apart when a wave almost sweeps Nero’s feet out from under him.  The tide comes up, so they retire to the beach and share a cigarette pressed shoulder to shoulder.  They watch the waves roll in until the sun grows too high and hot to be bearable.  Once back inside, Nero notices Angelo has a smattering of pink over the bridge of his nose and cheeks and ears.  He’s not sure if it’s the beginning of sunburn or if he’s developed a perpetual blush.  Either way, it’s cute, an unexpected softness to someone whom Nero had only previously associated with sharp lines and hard edges.

It’s not going to be easy, living with one another, not with the past so heavy and close behind them.  But they made a choice together, on the bluffs, at their breakfast table, and in the crashing waves of the Atlantic to try to work past the past and find what they need to move forward in one another.

* * *

 

_Months Later…_

Nero returns home to find Angelo with flour up to his elbows, intense concentration focused on spreading frosting onto a small round cake.

Normally, he would have snuck up behind him and tried to draw a reaction. 

But Nero doesn’t remember buying any of these ingredients, and though he’s pretty sure Angelo wouldn’t pickpocket from _him_ …

“Where did all this come from?” He tries not to sound accusatory.

Angelo does jump, being so absorbed in his cake decorating.

“You’re back early,” he _does_ sound accusing.

“Yes, and?” Nero crosses his arms.

Angelo mirrors his stance, smudges of flour on his face and flecks of frosting in his hair making him much less intimidating than usual.

“This was supposed to be a surprise,” he looks genuinely disappointed. Turning, he resumes spreading the frosting.

“Where did you get the ingredients?  Please tell me you didn’t steal them…” Nero hates how that sounds but still…

Angelo makes an amused sound, “No the local bakery let me take some leftovers.”

“And why would they do that?” Nero raises an eyebrow.

“Because I work for them,” Angelo admits finally.  “Again.  It was _supposed_ to be a surprise.”

Nero drops his defensive stance and stands beside Angelo as he works.  “Since when?” It’s an honest question.

Angelo sighs, “a couple weeks.  I just leave after you. It’s an older couple, mostly they just need me to run errands and reach things and carry things.  I told them it was my birthday.  So they gave my stuff to make a cake.”

“But it’s not April,” Nero blurts.  He instantly regrets it, reminded painfully of the circumstances by which he knows Angelo’s birthday.

His expression turns into a glare, eyes bright and cutting, “I hate my birthday. But it…” He sets down the bowl of frosting and the wooden spoon he’d used to smooth it over the cake.  “It’s close to an anniversary.”  He seems to notice his hands are dirty and goes over to a bucket of clear water, splashing it up over his arms and face.

“What anniversary?” Nero asks quietly, not moving from where he stands.  He riffles through a mental list of important dates, none of which fall in the upcoming weeks.

Seemingly satisfied with his removal of all traces of baking, Angelo dries his face, his hands and arms, and walks over to Nero, towel scrunched between his hands.

“A year ago you asked me to join your family,” he says, barely above a whisper.

Nero is surprised. His family is dead, and he can’t quite wrap his mind around why Angelo would place any importance in Nero’s offer to join him.

But Angelo lost his own family on his birthday, and if he can’t have that day then…

“You remembered?” Nero asks.  He can’t forget, after they fought the bounty hunter, their road trip, asking Angelo to join him.

“You surprised me that day.  Trusting me after barely knowing me,” he falls silent.

Even if the trust was ill placed, based on judgements of a person who didn’t truly exist. 

He still remembers the face Angelo had made, when handed his cigarette, asked to join the Vanetti family.  An opportunity for friendship, a sense of belonging, it must have been a sort of rebirth for Angelo.

“Do you want to try some?” Angelo asks, proffering Nero a tin plate with a large slice of cake on it.

Nero takes the tin to the table and begins digging in while Angelo stacks dirty dishes to be washed later before cutting himself a slice.

He sets his plate onto the table but pauses before taking a seat, looking curiously at Nero. Angelo sidles up close, pressing his thumb against the corner of Nero’s mouth where frosting inevitably had smudged.  Without hesitation, Angelo ducks his head down and presses a searing kiss to Nero’s lips, tongue darting out to trace the seam of Nero’s mouth.

He pulls back, licking his own lips.

“Sweet.” Is all he murmurs, thoughtful.

Nero’s mouth hangs open as he takes a seat across from him, digging into his cake. Without thinking, Nero swipes a dollop of frosting and smears it over his lips.

“What now?” He asks, a full on challenge.

Angelo’s eyes slide up from their intent focus on his cake, “you’re getting frosting all over your face.  You’re supposed to eat it.” He scolds, gently.

Nero rolls his eyes and finishes his cake, not breaking eye contact with Angelo for a moment. It’s a competition, one Nero is determined to win. 

He’s almost certain he does, when he stands and takes Angelo’s hand with the innocuous suggestion, “let’s go to bed.”

Later they lie, limbs entangled, far too close for the humidity outside, but past the point of caring.  Angelo had tasted sweet like frosting as Nero pressed his delicate wrists into the mattress, whispering the truth to him: that he was the most beautiful being Nero had ever encountered, that he could stay by Nero’s side forever, Nero would beg him to.

Angelo traces clever fingers over the contours of Nero’s shoulder, the planes of his neck and chest while they lie beside one another.

“Happy birthday,” Nero murmurs into his silky head of hair, arms securely draped around his waist. “Stay with me.”

Angelo pauses his gentle caresses and trails his fingers along Nero’s jaw, fingertips settling against the thrumming pulse in his throat.  He tips his head up for a kiss, shallow and searing.

When he pulls back, Nero thinks he can see the universe in his molten eyes.

“Yes.”

* * *

 

Some nights when the humidity is too oppressive for easy sleep, they lie several inches from one another, sheets pooled at their feet or kicked off the bed entirely. The heavy hours slide by with an agonizing slowness, relief streaming through the windows in the form of a cooling breeze only occasionally.

When he can’t sleep, Nero sometimes just talks, words travel slow and unhurried in the humid air. Angelo listens, and often his soothing voice is just enough to lull him to sleep. 

But this particular night, Nero turns on his side and looks over Angelo before murmuring, “I barely know anything about you.”

He’s taken aback by this.

Nero reaches out to brush the calloused pad of his thumb across Angelo’s sharp cheekbone, “I want to know everything about you.”

Angelo lets out a breathy laugh, “there’s really not much to know about me.”

It’s true.  So much of his identity had been formed around loss and the prospect of revenge that now, stripped free of these bonds, he’s still feeling out the gaps in his fragmented personality.

“Try me,” Nero insists, “tell me anything.”

Shifting onto his side to face Nero back, Angelo obliges.

“I like pineapple and sweets, my favorite season is summer.  I like it when we go on walks along the shore and you hold my hand,” he trails off when Nero reaches between them and folds his hand into Angelo’s.

“What about now?” He asks.

Angelo pretends to be very interested in the fraying threads of the sheets, face flushing slightly. “Yes.”

He pauses a moment, brushing his thumb over Nero’s entwined fingers.

“What about you?”

Nero seems to consider, “I like good food, but you knew that.”

“I’m deeply aware,” Angelo deadpans.

He smiles, “the ocean…it’s so different from Lawless…but it’s growing on me.  I like going on drives with the windows rolled down…but you knew that too.”

Angelo nods, “driving with you is fun.”  It’s more fun when Nero pulls over the car somewhere remote and kisses Angelo breathless in the passenger seat, but he’s not quite ready to say that one out loud.

Nero leans forward and presses a kiss against Angelo’s forehead, his goatee scratching the bridge of his nose.  Angelo scrunches his face, but his eyes are soft, brimming with fondness.

“You should try to rest,” he whispers, “we have work tomorrow.”

Snuggling into his pillow, Nero huffs in agreement.  Sleep will find him first, then Angelo, but only after he shifts so he can hear Nero’s heartbeat, low and reassuring like the waves breaching against the shore.

* * *

 

Nero returns from work to find Angelo bent over a pile of vegetables, chopping them with intense concentration. He closes the door slowly so it doesn’t make a sound and sneaks behind Angelo.  This time he does loop his arms around Angelo’s waist and presses a kiss to the crook of his neck and shoulder. Angelo startles slightly but relaxes a moment later.

“You’re back,” he hums.  A pause, then, “go take a bath you reek like fish.”

Nero squeezes his arms tighter around Angelo, voice low in his ear, “will you join me?”

The chopping motion halts, “maybe.  When you stop stinking like fish.” Angelo nudges Nero with his hip. 

The older man scoffs and drops his embrace. A bath would be nice.  He fills the tub with water from pump outside the house and settles in. The temperature is lukewarm, and it feels nice after a long day in the sun. Knees drawn to his chest, Nero lets his eyes slide shut. 

Minutes later he hears a sloshing sound and his eyes snap open in time to see Angelo settle opposite to him in the tub, knees drawn to his chest in a similar fashion. The water settles around his shoulders.  He watches Nero, thoughtfully.

Nero doesn’t exactly know what to say…it’s still somewhat of a surprise to him when Angelo humors his more intimate suggestions.  No matter how long they have been together, Angelo is often elusive, like a capricious lover.  It’s all the more thrilling then when he does display a softer, loving side.  It’s not a territory either are well-versed in, but through mutual need and want, they are learning.

Angelo pokes Nero’s shin with his foot, “turn around.”

Confused, but intrigued, Nero obeys and shifts around until his back is against Angelo’s folded legs.  It’s not uncomfortable per say, just unusual.  Nero questions Angelo’s motives until the younger man dips his hands under the water and begins rubbing slow, soothing circles with the heels of his hands up the sides of Nero’s spine. He groans, leaning into the touch.  Angelo works his hands over Nero’s shoulders, the base of his neck, methodically massaging the muscle.

“You’re tense,” he observes.

“This feels good,” Nero mumbles, feeling the tension of the day melt from his tired limbs.

Angelo hums in appreciation, halting his motions. Nero inadvertently whines at the pause in contact, feeling embarrassed for doing so. His hands return, this time to work shampoo through Nero’s damp hair. He feels himself sink deeper into the water, leaning heavily against Angelo while clever fingers massage his scalp.  Angelo washes his hair slowly, reaching into the water to scoop up handfuls to rinse.  He keeps one hand like a visor over Nero’s face, to keep the suds out of his eyes. When the task is finished, Angelo wraps his arms loosely around Nero’s shoulders, pressing a light trail of kisses from the back of his neck to his shoulder blade before resting his forehead against Nero’s back.

“Is this good?” Angelo asks.

“It’s wonderful,” Nero turns his head as far back as he can to look at his dark haired companion.

Without needing an invitation Angelo leans as far forward as he can to press and awkwardly angled kiss to Nero’s awaiting lips. He seems to think for a few moments before announcing.

“I had better check on dinner,” he inspects his hands, “and my fingers are getting pruny.”

Nero leans forward so he can more easily stand up.  Angelo dries himself off, quick and utilitarian.  Before he can walk away to the kitchen, Nero reaches out and brushes his fingers against the pale expanse of Angelo’s thigh.  He turns to Nero curiously, leaning down in tandem with Nero reaching up to brush his fingers along his jaw, tilting his head downward.  Angelo steadies himself with a hand on the side of the tub, tendons standing out against his skin. Nero gently cups his chin with one hand, the other still resting, fingertips splayed, on his thigh, and draws Angelo in for a kiss.  It’s sweet and slow, at a much better angle than the last. 

Angelo’s eyes have fluttered closed with pleasure by the time they part. 

“I’ll call you when dinner is ready,” he murmurs, his lips still brush Nero’s with each word.

Nero draws his hands away and settles back into the tub, allowing himself a couple more minutes to relax.

Before wandering out to the table, he pulls on a pair of boxers, for decency’s sake, but mostly because the wooden stools are very uncomfortable bare-bottomed. Angelo is similarly dressed, already digging into their meal. Halfway through eating, Nero reaches for Angelo’s hand across the table and he allows it to be held. It’s become a habit for them.

The Florida that Angelo longed for was a quiet one. Time has no meaning here, passage marked by cyclical tides and the rise and set of the sun. They made a home in this quiet, timeless place, found a way to fill the space between them with something other than loss.

He once thought he might go mad if he were to stay in the never-ending sameness.  But now…he would let time remain in an endless loop of oppressive, blazing days and humid, uncomfortable nights if it meant remaining in their blissful domestic life, forever.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the Genesis song of the same name "Second Home by the Sea"


End file.
